has anyone else just watched panarama?

[wannaBeWhateverIWannaBe]

am at the cockyness of that mohamed talanisi.

wow so I was the only one? This man has been operating without a licence for two years.

I'm watching it at present (I recorded it).

I think that the difficulty with what the "experts" are saying (eg with the 26yos) is that they should go away and keep trying for another year because they are young. But of course if you wait until you are older the IVF success rates drop significantly. And if you are ttc then having to wait 2 years before you get onto a waiting list for any treatment is a very long time and can have a significant impact on you. Personally I think that women should have more say in their treatment. I was furious that I had to wait for over 2 years just to get on the NHS list just because of my age. I haven't ever used contraception and have never fallen pregnant.

The ARGC is well known amongst IVF patients. It is rarely the first place that you go to because it is so expensive. It is the clinic of last resort - they do try out new treatments, and push the boundaries etc. If it gets taken out of operation then another clinic will fill the gap, or fewer women will become mothers. Great choice.

I've never used the ARGC but most of the women I do know who have resorted to IVF have gone into it fully informed. There are always difficult choices to be made by each patient, but personally I would prefer to be able to have a greater range of options (knowing that some of those options have greater risks attached), than having a more narrow range of safer options.

but surely IVF should be a last resort, not something you opt to have done because you've been trying for a year and want a baby now. Of course it's hard. having ttc for 13 months for my ds and now for 21 months unsuccessfully for baby no 2 I know only too well how hard and emotionally draining it can be, but ultimately this clinic has been deceiving people. Their figures are at the top of the league tables, and yet there's a clinic round the corner where they send the patients with smaller odds which is way down the table. A clinic that was shut down in 2005 and yet has continued to operate without a licence. By doing this, he has deceived people into thinking he's the most succefssful clinic in the country when in actual fact he's grading his patients and sending the ones that might affect hihs rating to the other clinic.

I had IVF at the ARGC a few years ago and now have twins. I thought the clinic was excellent and I had no qualms about Mr Tarannisi at all, I actually thought he was an extremely nice and very dedicated doctor. I don't think he has any life outside the clinic as he works there 7 days a week almost 52 weeks a year.

I thought that programme was extremely unbalanced in the sense that it did not mention the large numbers of women who succeed at the ARGC having had numerous failed attempts at other clincs, such as the lady who was featured in the programme Miracle Babies, a few weeks ago.

When I was going through IVF I used to post on an IVF discussion formum where we had a special thread for people undergoing IVF at the ARGC. Almost all of us were successful (5 out of 6 as far as I can remember), including a few women who had had many failed cycles at other cycles.

It really irritates me when I hear journalists imply that the ARGC "massage" their statistics to achieve their stunning results. Whatever they are doing it obviously works and many parents, myself included are extremely grateful for the treatment we received there.

yes I saw it too whilst ironing. bastard

wannabe, I have had on average about one period a year since I was 17. I was never going to be highly fertile. I wanted a baby when I was 26.

How many years should I have to wait in your opinion before I am allowed access to medical treatment? According to local NHS guidelines I would have waited until I was 30.5. Of course they didn't actually come out and tell me that when I first made the appointment. They strung me along with an appoijtment every 6 months or so where they did another blood test (rather than doing them all at once), just to meet their target.

When you've waited for over 4.5 years, then you can tell me how hard it is, especially when the health professionals are in effect lying to you. Though you probably can't even then becuase you already have a child and I didn't - that means that you had a wholely different perspective on your life.

The program was a witch hunt. By all means target all private clinics. When clinics publish their results they typically split out the results into age bands, due to the fact that success rates fall off after 41, so I don't think that he is manipulating the figures that much. As I understand it his main hike in figures come from the fact that he still puts back 3 embryos not 2, but of course the HFEA wouldn't want you to hear about that because they claimed that the number of embryos put back didn't have a significant impact on the success rates.

I'm not a patient of the ARGC but whilst the bare facts in the program might be true the way in which they were presented was highly biased imo.